Matisyahu’s Got it Easy – Heritage in a Time of Reformation

As many of you know, I took my son and some friends to see Matisyahu on Aug 9th. The next day after contemplating Matisyahu’s message I was struck by our own lack of heritage. Matisyahu is a Hassidic Jewish reggae musician with a very clear and concise message. His music is a proclamation to his Jewish brothers and sister to return to the fold. The message goes something like this. “I went out into the world. I got lost and was empty and troubled, but God is faithful. He sought me and found me and now I have come to realize that leaving our heritage is not the right path. I tried the world but God is good. He will lead us through the wilderness. He will see us through and exalt us one day. We are like the wanderers in Exodus. We need to stick it out and stay faithful and God will be our help and our redeemer. Return to your heritage”.

When I think of doing evangelistic work to the world around us, we do not have the luxury of calling people back to the faith of the fathers. For the world around us has no heritage. Also, when I think of my own children, what are the deep roots that they can turn to and embrace? Have we too forsaken our roots and our heritage?

Many people and families in the house church movement have left the heritage of their father’s and have found it necessary to leave the church in order to find healing from Jesus. This leaving comes with a great cost. What now is our heritage and our roots? What is the story of our people? Are we now a people without history? This of course is not true. We are part of something bigger than ourselves. We are part of the expansion of the kingdom throughout the centuries. But we need concrete heritage. We need some place to return to to connect with our roots. When these roots have four walls and a foundation, this has sacramental and concrete meaning for us as people. But when we live with little covenant commitment that can withstand generations and when we are a transient people, moving from state to state, then we lose any reality to our heritage.

We have only two choices?
We either go back to a people with heritage like the heritage of our father’s or we covenant with one another to build a people that have staying power beyond our own lifetimes. It is foolish and shallow to forsake the idea of heritage. To have no heritage is to have no story and to have no story is to have no identity and to have no identity is to have no community.

The answer is that we must dive into building a new move people which has connection to the kingdom story and has a personal story and history or we return to the established communities of faith around us. To simply sit as a people without a heritage without a place called home is to be the choose an option that is ultimately individualistic and altogether contrary to our most core value of Morally Beautiful Covenantal Community.
God Bless,
brad

The Mechanism of Discpleship

A few links to old posts on method:
In Defense of Method

Discipleship 101

The Mechanism of Discpleship
In this post I would like to discuss the concept of mechanism. A mechanism is the tool in which the method is delivered. The combination of method and mechanism is necessary to effectively disciple. The mechanism of all discipleship is community. It is the community of believers and our relationships in the culture of the body of Christ through which the discipleship teachings of Jesus are delivered. The way of Jesus Christ is caught not taught. Or more precisely the mechanism for teaching is socialization in community. We learn by doing not by hearing. As we live together, we learn a new life and a new story of what it means to be truly human together.

This community life is the life of the small group of the home church.

The Mechanism of Discipleship is the Home Church.
I use the term home church as opposed to small group here only because we often have many preconceived notions concerning small group. To many of us we associate small group with something, we do once a week and which is primarily bible study. In this model, the sermon or academic method is used but the building is a home as opposed to an auditorium. The method is the same as the sermon. Because this model is not the model I am speaking of here, I refrain from using the term small group and instead use home church. The home church is the place where we live and accomplish mission together. The purpose of home church is community and mission and not just the dissemination of information. Home church is to mechanism for discipleship and discipleship is the learning of a new way of life which is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ. We learn this new and spiritual way of power and mission and love in the context of the family of home church. Though bible study happens in “home church”, the purpose of home church is not bible study but discipleship and mission. Home church is the mechanism of discipleship. If we are to use the term small group, I would qualify this and say the monastic and missional small group.

The Necessity of Immersion – The New Monastic
If anyone has ever attempted to change some aspect of their character or has struggled with addictions, then you understand how difficult change is. Discipleship is about this level of dramatic change of our approach to life. Loving our enemies, not worrying about tomorrow, ceasing to lust after the world, living in love and fearlessness is a totally new way of life. I find that I personally need to be encouraged every day if I am to maintain such a spiritual perspective. It is absolutely impossible to change alone. Instead what we need is total immersion in a new culture. This new culture is the home church.

Today, our home church only meets weekly, but I find for my own spiritual walk this is completely inadequate. I need total immersion. I have friends who are seeking to maintain their spiritual program and spiritual walk and they find that they forget from week to week, and find that their spiritual life ebbs and flows. This is due to the lack of total immersion. If we are to bring freedom to people we must be able to offer them total immersion in the life of the kingdom through the mechanism of the home church.

My goal is to provide for those who seek it both a method and a mechanism to enter into the kingdom of God – a truly happy and heavenly quality of life. That method is found in the Sermon on the Mount and the principles of discipleship and the mechanism is the home church or monastic and missional small group.
God Bless, brad

A Fool for Christ and His Money

A disciple of Jesus is someone who is learning to follow the sayings of Jesus through the power of His life. His yoke is easy and His burden is light. But this yoke is not ease like the world sees ease. His peace is not like the peace and ease the world can give a man. But His yoke is the only true path to peace and service that abides in a love from the heart. His yoke is the cross.

Jesus’ sayings about Money
Do not Store up Treasures on Earth
Jesus’ first and foremost saying about money is very simple. Do not store up treasures on earth. This is a very simple command. It means do not store up treasures on earth. For where your treasure is so too is your heart. Those Hebrew rabbis were a very practical bunch. Some think Jesus is saying, if you treasure something then there is your heart. But that is a nonsense or no value statement. Jesus is not saying “where your heart is there your heart is” of “if your heart is in earthly things, then your heart is in earthly things”. No Jesus is saying that you know a tree by its fruit and if you have treasures on earth then that shows objectively that your heart is carnal and worldly. If we have lots of stuff, then it means we are valuing things by the world’s definitions of values. Our kingdom values and principles are the exact opposite of the worlds values. Simply, we as Christians value people over things.

A treasure is defined as a luxury item. If you have a choice to spend 1000 on something you do not need like a nicer car or a room addition on your home and you spend your money on this thing that can rust and corrode, then you are storing up treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy. It is that simple.

1 John says that “if we have material possessions, and behold our brother in need and do not meet that need then we do not possess the love of God” This saying too is quite easy to understand. If you are aware of a human need and you have material possessions then we share them. Well, there is a great deal of need out there, so the job of the good steward is not to withhold from one but to give to the most likely to receive in a worthy manner. Our job in the service of God is to be generous – wisely.

So many close there hands because they deem the one’s that we gave too in the past are not worthy. This I think is only acceptable if your funds are already earmarked for a worthy candidate.

Jesus said use your money in such a way that when you enter heavenly dwellings many will greet you with open arms. To give in such a way, extravagantly so that people will rejoice when they see you in heaven requires that the both extravagance and wisdom. All our money is dedicated to the kingdom and all our money is dedicated to meeting the needs of others. My only need for money is to provide for my personal food and shelter but other than that we ought to provide the necessities of those around us. We provide for our families food and shelter and for the poor Christians around the world and for the poor who are in desperate need as a result of the injustices of the world.

So what does this look like?
Well, it seems very simple to me.
First, we need to be very compassion focused in our money. The command is to be understood as denying self as an end in itself but taking up our cross and denying ourselves for the sake of the world. Jesus didn’t die on the cross as an act of religious piety but was driven by love for a lost and dying world in need of communion with the Father and power from the Holy Spirit. We are not driven by guilt and obligation but love and compassion.
Go
So we start with doing ministry and opening our eyes to the world. If we see as Jesus sees and we see the heart of God and the reward in heaven for those who give away a cup of cold water, we will live a life of simplicity in order to be as extravagant and as wisely generous as possible.
Disciple the Kids
We will not feel compelled to give our children treasures as in luxury items like cell phones and iPods but we will lead them to become disciples by our example. If my child see the no which I say to them as a yes I am saying the poor all around us then they too will find the mission of the Kingdom with us.
Play the Field
We sow lots of seed. If we feel that our giving is not always so wise then find some other people group to empower and develop economically. Get involved in a “worthy” cause.
Live By Different Values
There are millions of way to decrease your monthly budget. Live in community. If our goal is to be more generous every year and not to grow in wealth, we will never think of upgrading. Simplicity for the sake of the suffering of the world.

The End of All This Compassionate Lifestyle
The end of all of these sayings of Jesus is a life without fear. The world’s security comes from money. The world creates safety with a monetary safety net but we trust in the Lord. Jesus speaking of the life of generosity said, “Yeah of little faith. Look at the lilies of the field. They do not store in barns and their heavenly father clothes them.” God can do for you in terms of providing peace far better than the world. He can do for you what you could not do for yourself and the end of this faith is a life of communion with God and the peace and joy of the Kingdom.
God Bless,
brad

Relational Tithe

I was up in Azusa for a gathering of the Christian Community Development Association (http://www.ccda.org/) . They had gathered 30 leaders under age 40 from across the US to talk about the challenges and hopes for the Christian Community Development movement in the next 20 years.

One of the leaders gathered was a guy named Darin who is involved with the Simple Way, a new monastic group connected with Shane Claiborne (http://www.thesimpleway.org/)

Darin was telling me about a new cutting edge way of doing tithe. The website is http://www.relationaltithe.org/ Take a look at it. I would like to propose that we consider becoming a tithing cluster for this region. Take a look around the website and let’s have a dialogue.

I am also going to be sending you all an invite to be members of a blog Unorganized Religion. We can use this as a forum for some ongoing discussion about simple church.

12 Marks of New Monasticism

I found this passage listed on one of the websites connected to the Simple Way and Relational Tithe. Keith had asked me if they had scripture that guided them. There is one verse listed below but I see much scriptural influence in the ideas listed...

"Moved by God’s Spirit in this time called America to assemble at St. Johns Baptist Church in Durham, NC, we wish to acknowledge a movement of radical rebirth, grounded in God’s love and drawing on the rich tradition of Christian practices that have long formed disciples in the simple Way of Christ. This contemporary school for conversion which we have called a “new monasticism,” is producing a grassroots ecumenism and a prophetic witness within the North American church which is diverse in form, but characterized by the following marks:

1) Relocation to the abandoned places of Empire.
2) Sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us.
3) Hospitality to the stranger
4) Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communitiescombined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation.
5) Humble submission to Christ’s body, the church.
6) Intentional formation in the way of Christ and the rule of thecommunity along the lines of the old novitiate.
7) Nurturing common life among members of intentional community.
8) Support for celibate singles alongside monogamous married couples and their children.
9) Geographical proximity to community members who share a common rule of life.
10) Care for the plot of God’s earth given to us along with support of our local economies.
11) Peacemaking in the midst of violence and conflict resolution within communities along the lines of Matthew 18.
12) Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life.
May God give us grace by the power of the Holy Spirit to discern rules for living that will help us embody these marks in our local contexts as signs of Christ’s kingdom for the sake of God’s world."

Giving in the House Church

This weekend we took an offering at House Church for the Barnabas fund. We decided after reading Acts 4 that we should begin to gather our finances in such a way that we could give them then to the "orphans and widows" as we meet them in our lives.